For years we have been complaining about the volume of crews pre-qualified for the Henley Royal Regatta. There have been near-countless incidences of mediocre crews being sent right through to Tuesday racing while many fast crews are fighting for precious few spots left in the madness of the Friday Time Trials. So when this year’s list was released on Sunday, on first reading it looked like a significant step in the right direction. The Fawley and Island Challenge Cups had eight places available on Friday, the Temple will have thirteen and the Thames Challenge Cup’s field will be made up with a majority of crews going through the time trial. This was a strong step in the right direction by the Stewards, striking the right balance between incentivising racing throughout the whole season while also allowing for strong crews who come together later on.
However, when putting together the list of those who had been spared the trouble of the qualifying races, I was struck by who had made the cut. The source of many of the issues remained. Almost every entry from overseas had been allowed to skip the qualification regardless of the season they have had so far. I recognise that in order to make the trip worthwhile for those travelling great distances for the Regatta, the stewards will soften the requirements and stop jet lag ruining a time trial performance. But with the standard for pre-qualification being raised across the board for domestic entry, no comparable rise for international crews has accompanied it.
Nowhere is this more clear than in the student eights. Harvard-Radcliffe, the women’s rowing program from Cambridge, Massachusetts have had a difficult season. Well off the pace at the Ivy League Championships, they failed to earn an entry to the NCAA Championships. They made the trip across the Atlantic largely in recognition of Head Coach Liz O’Leary’s thirty-seventh and final year at the helm of the Crimson rather than in recognition of a phenomenal season. Despite these results the Stewards viewed that their second eight was worthy of pre-qualification, a position otherwise only given to top-six US programs and Oxford Brookes
Georgetown University have brought their women across for the first time in program history and despite struggling to break into the top fifty Varsity Eights all year and having failed to even make Saturday’s racing at Henley Women’s, they too were able to glide on past the chaos of time trials. This in spite of Newcastle’s fourth place in Championship Eights at BUCS regatta leaving the storied program without guaranteed representation for student women at the Regatta.
For the student men, there are similar issues. Colgate University, who finished twentieth at the National Championships, were granted entries in both the Temple and Prince Albert Challenge Cups. Worse still was the University of Virginia, eleven seconds slower than Colgate and a boat that could only manage fifth place at the ACRA National Championship, a lower level for those who do not have Varsity status, more comparable to intermediate level at BUCS. They too have been able to avoid Friday’s competition for both student men’s events.
The crews from the United States are not the only ones to find themselves in the Stewards’ favour. Nereus have managed to pre-qualify their second Temple Challenge Cup crew despite losing to four Oxford Brookes crews in Duisberg and having a shorter journey than some domestic crews. Meanwhile, the University of London’s intermediate eight-winning crew has been deemed too slow to deserve pre-qualification.
I write this not from a position of nationalistic fervour nor do I have any ill-will towards any of the crews mentioned. In fact, I have been a great champion of both American Collegiate Rowing within the UK and for Henley Royal Regatta within the United States, as highlighted in my many podcasts and articles for JRN. I write this as I worry that the regatta’s reputation as a market-leading contest between giants of the sport will be eroded if it just becomes a holiday regatta for second and third tier eights who have no special qualification other than being from somewhere else.
I am not joining the calls for every oversubscribed event to be sent to a Time Trial, but simply to reserve pre-qualification for those whom there is no doubt of their status in the top 32, 20, 16 or otherwise entries.
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